A Beginner’s Guide to Local SEO: How to Conquer Your Local Market

Local SEO should be a huge part of any company’s marketing plan for reaching customers in their local area. Why? With mobile use steadily increasing, it’s important that a company is visible during these many mobile searches and for any local searches made via desktop (for example: “ice cream shop houston”). Search engines are constantly updating and adding new algorithms into the mix to provide users with the most accurate and helpful results pertaining to their search.

To help navigate these blustering waters of local SEO, we devised this quick guide along with SEO tips to help businesses get a hold of their local SEO strategy and improve their visibility in local search results overall.

First, What Types of Businesses Need Local SEO?

Any business that gets all of their customer and clients locally should consider local SEO. This includes service places like doctors, restaurants, donut shops, coffee shops even a local marketing firm. If you have a physical address and you expect people to stop by for a visit, it’s important to invest in local SEO tactics.

What’s the Difference Between SEO and Local SEO?

When it comes it any type of SEO, you’re still dealing with the same components: on-page keywords, links, social media, indexing). The difference is local SEO includes a few addition pieces like:

Local business profiles on Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Places

Citations which are any mentions of your NAP (name, address and phone number) on any other website, blog, social media channel that search engines use to judge credibility and existence of the business.

Customer reviews and ratings

Intelligent Keyword Research & On-Page Optimization

Keyword research is important for finding out what users are searching for. Each local business needs to find out the magic search terms that bring in the most qualified web visitors and leads to their website. Through keyword research, a company can collect the best terms to include in their page content, titles, header tags, etc. It’s important that when determining these keywords that businesses are detailed (digital media marketing firm houston vs. marketing firm houston) and avoid keyword stuffing, which is spammy and can turn off website visitors quickly. The more detailed and specific you are with keywords brings you more qualified leads that are most likely to be interested in your products and services.

Complete Your Local Places Pages on Google, Bing, Yahoo

These are the three biggest local business directory listings that always find themselves at the top of search results. It’s important for local businesses to set up their profile on these sites AND optimized correctly to improve their online visibility. Take the time to fill out every section on the profile and include videos, logos, and images. This will provide you with long-term local SEO benefits later on. And don’t forget to verify the listings using the instructions provided by each site.

Create/Claim/Modify Business Listings with Accurate Information

The more your business is listed on online business directories, the more it gains authority and importance with search engines. However, it’s still important to create listings for you business on reputable, big name directories in order the see big benefits. Spammy no-name business listing sites won’t do you any good! For guidance, take look at this helpful list compiled by Hubspot of the top 50 local business directories. Focus efforts on popular sites, making sure that your information is in a consistent format.

Encourage Customers Reviews

Customer reviews play the biggest role in growing your local SEO since customers strongly depend on the reviews before making any kind of buying decision. Many business listings sites will have a place for customers to make reviews and the more positive reviews you receive, the more visible you become. Don’t be afraid to ask customers to make reviews, especially if they’ve had a great experience with you. The key is to make the process as easy and simple as possible for your customer to access your review sites.

Integrated Social Links & Plugins

Lastly, when it comes to building links to your website, the more natural the link is, the more valuable it is. And content marketing helps build those natural links. Blogging can help with this. By creating a daily blog post with useful information on topics related to your business, products, and services, you’re providing an great content for your reader to take in and share to others on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Search engines love this and these social signals help build powerful authority for your website.

Small Screen Producer is dedicated to designing and creating your company’s total web presence. As the leading innovator of digital media, we have the experience to capitalize your unique strengths and help your business succeed. Contact us today.